Happily Imperfect

Essex Girl: A type of young woman, supposedly to be found in and around Essex, and variously characterized as unintelligent, promiscuous and materialistic.

Oxford Living Dictionaries

Labels. We all have them, don’t we? They’re the reason I’m writing this book. I’m wildly, wonderfully imperfect, and my label as an Essex Girl proves it.

Am I an Essex Girl?

Absolutely!

Do I fit the stereotype?

Absolutely not! There’s so much more to people than the labels we’re given, and I want to share how I stay positive, how much I love my life, and how flawed yet happy I am, hence the title Happily Imperfect. This is how I am, and how I try to be, even when things feel less than ideal.

I’m far from perfect. I make mistakes, and that’s okay – in fact, it’s brilliant! This is the imperfect way I live my life: I love my work and revel in my family and community. I want to share how I stay positive, and show you how I deal with life’s ups and downs. I’ll be giving you completely imperfect advice, telling you what helps me in the hope that it helps you too. Your life doesn’t have to be perfect – far from it. You don’t need to be, look or even act a certain way to be happy.

I’m going to celebrate all of my imperfections, and there are plenty of them! I’m a ‘smother’ (Smothering Mummy, as my boys call me), a buffoon of a girlfriend, a fairly idiotic daughter, and I’m incredibly lucky to be a telly personality too. It all goes to show that there’s no right or wrong way to live wa-hoo!

Take from this book what you will. There is no single way to do things. I haven’t been through major trauma: I just want to share my journey with you, so that you know the real me, the unfiltered me, the far-from-perfect me. I want to pull open the curtain of celebrity because the people on your screens are just that: people – exactly like you. They’re no better or worse than anyone else. I’m passionate about breaking down barriers of all kinds – class, race, sexuality, whatever else holds people back or separates us. We’re all human. Let’s give ourselves a flippin’ break from judging others and – most importantly – ourselves.

Let’s go on annual leave from being told how to look, what to wear and who to be. Let’s say thanks but no thanks to the advertisers and social media telling us how to do or be anything. We don’t need to be thinner, richer, younger (!) or have a cut-glass accent. Those things don’t make you special to others. You being the only ‘you’ is the single most important thing that makes you stand out from the crowd. What a boring time we’d be having if everyone was the same.

Sometimes labels overshadow our talents. I was lucky enough that that wasn’t the case when I stepped onto the X Factor stage. I was last in the queue of thousands. I’d been waiting in an audition room packed with people until there was no one left except me, Zach and Mum. You can imagine what I looked like after spending sixteen hours in that space with my one-year-old. There was sick on my Converse trainers. My hair had been pulled every which way, and I wondered if I would ever actually get up there in front of the judges.

When they finally called my name, there was a rush of ‘Oh, my gosh, this is really happening!’ My heart was pounding and my mouth was as dry as if I’d eaten a bowl of sand. I felt my lips roll up like a blind – they literally curled up. I was